Author : Jay L. Halio
Publisher : Macmillan Reference USA
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 24,68 MB
Release : 1996
Category : Lear
ISBN : 9780783800349
Each volume in this series provides an introduction tracing the subject author's critical reputation, trends in interpretation, developments in textual and biographical scholarship, and reprints of selected essays and reviews, beginning with the author's contemporaries and continuing through to current scholarship. Many volumes also feature new essays by leading scholars and critics, specially commissioned for the series.
Author : Jeffrey Kahan
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 385 pages
File Size : 33,3 MB
Release : 2008-04-18
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1135973652
Is King Lear an autonomous text, or a rewrite of the earlier and anonymous play King Leir? Should we refer to Shakespeare’s original quarto when discussing the play, the revised folio text, or the popular composite version, stitched together by Alexander Pope in 1725? What of its stage variations? When turning from page to stage, the critical view on King Lear is skewed by the fact that for almost half of the four hundred years the play has been performed, audiences preferred Naham Tate's optimistic adaptation, in which Lear and Cordelia live happily ever after. When discussing King Lear, the question of what comprises ‘the play’ is both complex and fragmentary. These issues of identity and authenticity across time and across mediums are outlined, debated, and considered critically by the contributors to this volume. Using a variety of approaches, from postcolonialism and New Historicism to psychoanalysis and gender studies, the leading international contributors to King Lear: New Critical Essays offer major new interpretations on the conception and writing, editing, and cultural productions of King Lear. This book is an up-to-date and comprehensive anthology of textual scholarship, performance research, and critical writing on one of Shakespeare's most important and perplexing tragedies. Contributors Include: R.A. Foakes, Richard Knowles, Tom Clayton, Cynthia Clegg, Edward L. Rocklin, Christy Desmet, Paul Cantor, Robert V. Young, Stanley Stewart and Jean R. Brink
Author : Norman MacLean
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 302 pages
File Size : 30,57 MB
Release : 2012-03-01
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0226500314
Selected works and incidental writings by the celebrated author of A River Runs Through It, plus excerpts from a 1986 interview. In his eighty-seven years, Norman Maclean played many parts: fisherman, logger, firefighter, scholar, teacher. But it was a role he took up late in life, that of writer, that won him enduring fame and critical acclaim—as well as the devotion of readers worldwide. Though the 1976 collection A River Runs Through It and Other Stories was the only book Maclean published in his lifetime, it was an unexpected success, and the moving family tragedy of the title novella—based largely on Maclean’s memories of his childhood home in Montana—has proved to be one of the most enduring American stories ever written. The Norman Maclean Reader is a wonderful addition to Maclean’s celebrated oeuvre. Bringing together previously unpublished materials with incidental writings and selections from his more famous works, the Reader will serve as the perfect introduction for readers new to Maclean, while offering longtime fans new insight into his life and career. In this evocative collection, Maclean as both a writer and a man becomes evident. Perceptive, intimate essays deal with his career as a teacher and a literary scholar, as well as the wealth of family stories for which Maclean is famous. Complete with a generous selection of letters, as well as excerpts from a 1986 interview, The Norman Maclean Reader provides a fully fleshed-out portrait of this much admired author, showing us a writer fully aware of the nuances of his craft, and a man as at home in the academic environment of the University of Chicago as in the quiet mountains of his beloved Montana. Various and moving, the works collected in The Norman Maclean Reader serve as both a summation and a celebration, giving readers a chance once again to hear one of American literature’s most distinctive voices. Praise for The Norman MacLean Reader “A solid, satisfying, well-made body of work by a patient craftsman.” —Chicago Tribune “The Norman Maclean Reader fills out and makes more human the impressions of the restless, inquiring storyteller we saw in previously published works. In his writings, at their best, we too feel the thrusts and strains. He is a writer of great beauty, in his own terms.” —Financial Times “Weltzien has not only done great service for Norman Maclean’s readers, he has rightly expanded Maclean’s place in American literature . . . . For me, The Norman Maclean reader is discovered treasure.” —Bloomsbury Review
Author : Kenneth Muir
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 42,96 MB
Release : 2015-04-10
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1317531299
Originally published in 1984. With selections organised chronologically, this collection presents the best writing on one of Shakespeare’s most studied plays. The structure displays the changing responses to the play and includes a wide range of criticism from the likes of Coleridge, Hazlitt, Moulton, Granville-Barker, Orwell, Levin, Stampfer, Gardner and Speaight interspersed with short entries from Keats, Raleigh, Freud and others. The final chapter by the editor elucidates his own thoughts on Lear, building on his commentary in the Introduction which puts the collection in context.
Author : Tana Wojczuk
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 32,24 MB
Release : 2021-06-08
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1501199536
Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award Finalist for the Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction Finalist for the Marfield Prize For fans of Book of Ages and American Eve, this “lively, illuminating new biography” (The Boston Globe) of 19th-century queer actress Charlotte Cushman portrays a “brisk, beautifully crafted life” (Stacy Schiff, bestselling author of The Witches and Cleopatra) that riveted New York City and made headlines across America. All her life, Charlotte Cushman refused to submit to others’ expectations. Raised in Boston at the time of the transcendentalists, a series of disasters cleared the way for her life on the stage—a path she eagerly took, rejecting marriage and creating a life of adventure, playing the role of the hero in and out of the theater as she traveled to New Orleans and New York City, and eventually to London and back to build a successful career. Her Hamlet, Romeo, Lady Macbeth, and Nancy Sykes from Oliver Twist became canon, impressing Louisa May Alcott, who later based a character on her in Jo’s Boys, and Walt Whitman, who raved about “the towering grandeur of her genius” in his columns for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. She acted alongside Edwin and John Wilkes Booth—supposedly giving the latter a scar on his neck that was later used to identify him as President Lincoln’s assassin—and visited frequently with the Great Emancipator himself, who was a devoted Shakespeare fan and admirer of Cushman’s work. Her wife immortalized her in the angel at the top of Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain; worldwide, she was “a lady universally acknowledged as the greatest living tragic actress.” Behind the scenes, she was equally radical, making an independent income, supporting her family, creating one of the first bohemian artists’ colonies abroad, and living publicly as a queer woman. And yet, her name has since faded into the shadows. Now, her story comes to brilliant life with Tana Wojczuk’s Lady Romeo, an exhilarating and enlightening biography of the 19th-century trailblazer. With new research and rarely seen letters and documents, Wojczuk reconstructs the formative years of Cushman’s life, set against the excitement and drama of 1800s New York City and featuring a cast of luminaries and revolutionaries who changed the cultural landscape of America forever. The story of an astonishing and uniquely American life, Lady Romeo reveals one of the most remarkable forgotten figures in our history and restores her to center stage, where she belongs.
Author : J. R. Thorpe
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 45,83 MB
Release : 2021-12-07
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1643138243
Inspired by Shakespeare's King Lear, this breathtaking debut novel tells the story of the most famous woman ever written out of literary history. "I am the queen of two crowns, banished fifteen years, the famed and gilded woman, bad-luck baleful girl, mother of three small animals, now gone. I am fifty-five years old. I am Lear's wife. I am here." Word has come. Care-bent King Lear is dead, driven mad and betrayed. His three daughters too, broken in battle. But someone has survived: Lear's queen. Exiled to a nunnery years ago, written out of history, her name forgotten. Now she can tell her story. Though her grief and rage may threaten to crack the earth open, she knows she must seek answers. Why was she sent away in shame and disgrace? What has happened to Kent, her oldest friend and ally? And what will become of her now, in this place of women? To find peace she must reckon with her past and make a terrible choice - one upon which her destiny, and that of the entire abbey, rests. Giving unforgettable voice to a woman whose absence has been a tantalising mystery, Learwife is a breathtaking novel of loss, renewal and how history bleeds into the present.
Author : graf Leo Tolstoy
Publisher :
Page : 216 pages
File Size : 38,90 MB
Release : 1906
Category :
ISBN :
Author : Brian Vickers
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 412 pages
File Size : 35,35 MB
Release : 2016-04-04
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0674970330
King Lear exists in two different texts: the Quarto (1608) and the Folio (1623). Because each supplies passages missing in the other, for over 200 years editors combined the two to form a single text, the basis for all modern productions. Then in the 1980s a group of influential scholars argued that the two texts represent different versions of King Lear, that Shakespeare revised his play in light of theatrical performance. The two-text theory has since hardened into orthodoxy. Now for the first time in a book-length argument, one of the world’s most eminent Shakespeare scholars challenges the two-text theory. At stake is the way Shakespeare’s greatest play is read and performed. Sir Brian Vickers demonstrates that the cuts in the Quarto were in fact carried out by the printer because he had underestimated the amount of paper he would need. Paper was an expensive commodity in the early modern period, and printers counted the number of lines or words in a manuscript before ordering their supply. As for the Folio, whereas the revisionists claim that Shakespeare cut the text in order to alter the balance between characters, Vickers sees no evidence of his agency. These cuts were likely made by the theater company to speed up the action. Vickers includes responses to the revisionist theory made by leading literary scholars, who show that the Folio cuts damage the play’s moral and emotional structure and are impracticable on the stage.
Author : Joseph Rosenblum
Publisher : Salem Press
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 16,15 MB
Release : 2015
Category : English drama
ISBN : 9781619258648
Examines all 39 of the most influential plays by Shakespeare, with an in-depth examination of each play's historical significance, literary technique, and contemporary alignment. The plays of William Shakespeare, from tragedies such as Hamlet to comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, have endured since their first productions in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. A vital part of high school and college literature curricula today, these plays continue to educate and entertain, showing students - as well as the general populace - themes of humanity that have persevered throughout the ages, such as romantic love, greed, power, revenge, forgiveness, and many more. Written by leading experts in the field of Shakespearean studies, Critical Survey of Shakespeare's Plays closely examines all 39 of Shakespeare's plays, as well as Shakespeare's life, style, technique, and influences. This title begins with a biography of Shakespeare and an introduction to his plays as a whole, followed by close readings of individual plays. Each essay is devoted to a single work and provides an in-depth critical analysis of the play's historical significance, literary/dramatic techniques, and meaning to a contemporary audience. An abstract, explanation of context, and lists of keywords, works cited, and recommended books for further study also enhance each essay. The second half of the book focuses on various critical readings, analyzing Shakespeare's form, technique, and syntax, as well as main themes, motifs, and related topics. Also included are other resources useful to studying Shakespeare's plays, including a guide to free online sources and more literary criticism, a bibliography, a list of contributors, and a complete index. The essays in this single volume compile the essentials for any person interested in Shakespeare, whether a student approaching his works for the first time or a habitual theatergoer about to witness a new production of one of the plays. This title is a set of essays that record the history of Shakespeare the man, the dramatist, and the poet, and analyze each work attributed to his pen. With so much comprehensive analysis of Shakespeare's life and works, Critical Survey of Shakespeare's Plays is a must-have resource for high school and undergraduate literature departments, as well as public libraries who wish to support their literature collections.
Author : Maynard Mack
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 139 pages
File Size : 10,14 MB
Release : 2013-10-08
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1136563210
This edition first published in 1966. Previous edition published 1965 by the University of California Press. Perhaps more than any other play of Shakespeare's King Lear has been subjected to almost totally contradictory interpretations. In the first historical section of the book the author describes the varying concepts of the play and the distortions of text and even plot that have been widely used. Garrick's playing of Lear as a pathetic and down-trodden old man. Laughton's and Olivier's versions and Herbert Blaus's theory of the 'subtext' are described and analysed. The central section of the book examines the medieval, folk and romance sources of the play. The final chapter illustrates how the action of the play and its pervading violence and evil are not explained in terms of human motive and rely for their meaning more on their effects than their antecedents. An important theme is the play's examination of society and the ties of service and family love.
